It's 40 below what outside?

I swore that I was not going to turn my blog into a bitch session about the weather in Fairbanks. For my next post I was going to write about something meaningful or at least controversial, like religion, politics, or both. Weather is something that we usually talk about when we are trying to be polite and avoid offending anyone, but still wish to engage in conversation with other human beings. And perhaps that is because in most places, the weather can be largely irrelevant to the way that western culture and civilization are carried out. My problem with Alaska has always been that I liked it except when it intruded on my otherwise normal life. Of course, if you read my previous post, then to understand Alaska, you have to realize that the people here love it precisely because it makes day-to-day life exotic and challenging in such a way that it is not "normal" and can never be "normal."

Adventuresome spirits like me appreciate and relish 40 below the first time we experience it because it is something that human beings in most of the world seldom observe. There is something beautiful and enchanting about the first ice fog one sees. We will gladly go outside and embrace the cold, especially so that we can get on the phone and gloat to our family and friends in the "lower 48" about how tough we are and how life is great here. The air feels profoundly still and peaceful. Even if you are a city dweller like me (Fairbanks being considered "urban" for Alaska), it feels like the Earth has stopped spinning and that each individual is alone in quiet solitude with God and no one else. But 40 below weather gives me the overwhelming urge to sit inside my warm house and be grateful that I have shelter from the world and to snuggle up with a good book and a cat in my lap while drinking a warm cup of cocoa. That is what I expected from Fairbanks - that the winters up here would bring closeness and unity with the Divine as well as respite from the business of the day-to-day concerns and worries with which we humans fill our lives.

That, of course, is vacation Fairbanks - the Fairbanks to which Japanese tourists venture in the middle of winter to experience what it is to feel 40 below, gaze upon the northern lights, and go swimming at Chena Hot Springs. I too, did this when I first moved to Fairbanks. It is amazing how immersing oneself in scalding hot water in the midst of subzero air temperatures can actually feel comfortably balanced. For the locals though, Fairbanks is not a place of rest - it is a place of work.

Travelling to a place and living in a place are two different things. And when it is obscenely cold out and it is darker than midnight, the winter becomes a cruel slave driver. This morning, I wanted to cry when I had to remove a sleeping kitty from my lap and then go through through the chore of putting on a heavy parka and heavy boots just to venture from my house to my garage. It hurt to take breaths of air and even with long underwear and a parka, it was miserable to feel the cold against my bare face, as well as my back and legs that were bundled. That, of course, is with no wind, for we do not have much wind in Fairbanks. And it is pure misery to try to stand outside the car long enough to try to disconnect it from the extension chord. Then, of course I had to get in the car and drive the 8/10ths of a mile to work, to once again brave the cold long enough to get into the building.

I realized that I have never lived in a place in which I must personally rely on a vehicle as much as here - a place where I live less than two from the grocery store, half a mile from church and less than one mile from work and the city has actually deigned to put in sidewalks, bike lanes, and crosswalks. In Texas and Oklahoma, I could walk at least a few places if I wanted, even if some people looked at me strangely for it. When I lived in Boston, walking was even fashionable and chic. I do not even want to contemplate my carbon footprint and I ashamed to tell you that I burn more gas warming up my vehicle for my personal comfort than I spend actually driving it. I'm ashamed to say that I've paid out the wazoo for full service gas so that I could stay inside my car and still complained about the cold from having to cut the heat for a few minutes while the attendant pumped. I am ashamed to tell you that I spent more time breathing fresh air and being "outdoors" when I lived in Boston than since moving here - a place people come to bond with nature and get away from city pollution. But these few days of 40 below require an inhuman sacrifice to be good to the Earth that I find myself unwilling to make like so many others here. So the EPA comes after us because the cold, still air makes the pollution stick around for us all to breathe and the cold, still air makes us not want to get into a car that has not been warming up for half an hour and to not really care how we are heating our homes as long as we are warm and it doesn't cost too much and eat up that "go somewhere warm for a week or two" vacation fund. All I can say about that, is "aloha."

There are people who say that you can put on enough clothes to be warm enough to walk because there are places in Alaska that do not have roads. And there are people like me, who think that suiting up with enough clothes to be an astronaut is acceptable for that once in a lifetime chance to see something exotic no human has seen before, but who find the idea of putting on that many clothes to take a walk outside on a street you've seen a thousand times before to go to a place you've been a thousand times before to be uninspiring drudgery. And I realized that if I lived on the moon, that eventually it would lose its magic and become an old, tired place with the view of the Earth becoming obscured by the monotony of day-to-day life.

At about this moment, I am ready to curse my life and think that I loathe my job. Of course, if I were a taste tester at a chocolate factory, I don't think I would have been any more enthusiasm for coming in today. When people describe the early sourdough's life - it was all work. They went to work to earn the money and came home and did chores to carve out a life in this harsh environment. When the old folk of the deep south reminisce, they might talk about front porch sitting, Sunday afternoon hymn sings, or even *gasp* drives in the country for leisure. It was not that they were richer - it is that it takes far more effort to live a human life in the arctic. Those early sourdoughs did not have much "free time."

There are a few places on this Earth with harsher climates in which people live. I suppose I can be thankful that I don't live in "the bush" or our sister city of Yakutsk. It is 40 and 50 below much of the winter there. This is the Siberia to which Russians were exiled for punishment. I read a fascinating article about life in Yakutsk, which I will post a link to at the end of this blog entry. The hardest part for me to wrap my head around was the following quote:

"Of course it's difficult to live here," says Fyodorov of Gazeta Yakutia. "But the people here were born here. It's our homeland. What can you do about it?"

Maybe they share the same connection to the land and nature that Alaskans share. Or maybe like all human beings, they have a difficult time stepping outside their "comfort zone," for I have heard Fairbanksans too, say that they could "not live someplace windy." As for me, I do not think my problem is stepping outside of my comfort zone, so much as it staying there. I have been to Russia - to St. Petersburg and Moscow, but I have not ventured to Yakutsk. And perhaps someday, I could be persuaded to visit, though only in the summer. Fairbanks has given me more than a sufficient feel for arctic temperatures. But deep down, my problem is that no matter where I live, I can always imagine living somewhere else - it's how I ended up in Alaska in the first place and it's how I can easily imagine living elsewhere now that I've experienced 40 below zero.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/yakutsk-journey-to-the-coldest-city-on-earth-771503.html

Postmodern Reflections on Alaska

The craziest thing I ever did in my life was sell all my stuff and move to Fairbanks, Alaska to marry a guy I met on the internet. I say, the "craziest," and not the "stupidest" because Brian are still together and still in love with each other. As for Alaska, I can say that it is a place that I approached with an open heart and mind. I wanted very much to settle down and live here and love it the way that Alaskans do. But I came to Alaska with the same attitude as a woman who is in love with the idea of being in love, but understands neither her lover nor herself as individuals. When I finally got to know Alaska for what it was, I realized that I couldn't love Alaska while at the same time being myself. I could respect it and understand it, but I could not love it in the exclusive way that it demands.

Alaska and I do not get along because of winter. If you want to embrace Alaska, you have to embrace winter as an old, familiar friend. I wanted so desperately to love winter and I was certain that all of those tales about how awful it was from the mouths of those who shunned it for sunnier climates were gross exaggerations. I'm originally from Texas so I always had this romantic fascination with this strange, rare, beautiful substance known as snow. I believed that it transformed our dull, dreary world into an otherworldly, unfamiliar place. However, I have learned that when fresh, white snow becomes old and familiar, the world feels tired and in need of renewal.

But there is more to an Alaskan winter than the snow. There is the darkness. By the time we get to winter solstice, the sun doesn't rise until 11 in the morning and it has set by 3pm. The days rapidly get shorter before solstice and they will soon rapidly get longer. Then there is the extreme cold. For instance, since moving here, I have learned that it is possible for it to get too cold to snow. Yet years go by between school cancellations. The world goes on in Alaska. You are expected to defiantly go about your life anyway as if this is normal because it is normal for here. If it is 4o degrees below zero, you must boldly go out into the world and prove yourself as a better human being because you willingly embrace this challenge so many refuse. And intellectually, I knew this to be the case when I moved here. Yet I didn't expect it to matter, for I thought that living in Alaska might somehow be a little like living on the moon. I wanted to believe that someday we could be free of our need for the Earth to carry on with our lives. And perhaps this underlying assumption of mine explains better than anything why I will never make the transition from cheechako to sourdough.

I remember the first time I got off the plane in Fairbanks, I looked at the cars in the parking lot that all had chords with plugs dangling from their fronts. In my youthful naivete, I exclaimed, "I didn't know that Ford and Chevy made electric cars! I think that is so nice that Alaskans are so environmentally conscious." That was the moment my education about Alaska really began, for I learned that cars will not start at the temperatures we get in the winter if they are not plugged into a block heater. And if it is cold enough to need to plug in your car, it is far too cold for this Texas girl to not complain about having to take the time to be outside long enough to do so. People tell me of the old days before they had plug-ins when you had to remove the oil from your car and take it in to heat it up and then put it back in the car the next morning. True sourdoughs will tell you that 40 below isn't that bad because it used to be 60 to 70 below for weeks. And I wonder about these people who choose Alaska because it is Alaska - these people who came here from elsewhere because they thought it was so beautiful and who now can't imagine why they would want to live elsewhere.

Then there are always people who ask things like, "Do people who live in Alaska actually live in igloos?" I was not one of those ignorant people. Instead, I dared to look at some of the new construction here - the things like Wal-Mart and Home Depot and the rumors that we might someday get a Target or an Olive Garden in Fairbanks and think, "I could live in Alaska. It's not really that different to live here." Even with the car plug-ins and the hours of darkness in the winter and the temperatures cold enough to make me think that surely I was living on a planet other than the Earth from which I came, I still believed that Alaska had modernized enough to be able to carry on the same sort of daily life one might carry on elsewhere, especially since it is expected to do so here. Deep down inside, I believed that Alaska was Texas, but with snow and an exotic set of scenery that could indulge my fantasies enough to make me feel like I had been an astronaut and traveled to live on another planet.

There are some similarities between Alaska and Texas. Both are large, oil-producing, red states in which people have composed a great number of songs about how great it is to live there and proudly declare they like their state better than their country and who also like to own guns. But I knew a large number of reluctant Texans - people who thought they were in temporary exile from another place, but who gradually grew to love and embrace a Texan identity. They don't particularly dislike Texas, per se, they just don't understand why people see it as the promised land flowing with milk and honey, but over time warmed up to the idea. But Alaska is one of those places that quickly demands a strong opinion. And if you think like I did, that the ideal of living in Alaska is to prove that humans are capable of maintaining and carving out a civilization absolutely anywhere and that someday we will be among the stars, then you will find that this is not the place for you. For the people that love and choose Alaska for being Alaska embrace its harshness because they want to believe that there is a limit to human progress and that there are still places one can go where one must respect nature and be connected to the Earth. I don't think Alaskans ever look forward to a day when they get to add another seat to the House.

They come here because they want to get away from "people" by which they mean society, government, rules, rampant commercialism, and an instant connection to the rest of the world. A friend once told me that Fairbanks needed January and February because without those harsh months, too many people would come here and then it wouldn't be "Fairbanks" anymore. Now, I know that every town has its group of citizenry who decry "box stores" as the destroyer of the local businesses, but even that is not what Alaskans really mean when they complain about them. They do not want to ever live in a place where you can forget where it is that you live and feel like it is any town in America. And they are a strange mix of people, who proclaim to want as little government in their lives as possible, yet often work for the government. They vote Republican, but join labor unions and they fear global warming, but want to drill in ANWR.

I think to be a true Alaskan, you have to respect the land. The people here value connection to nature more than connection to human society. They embrace the winters because they hope that the severity will always keep the "progress" at bay. I have met many Alaskans who say that they never want to move from here because they enjoy being able to go out in the dark, cold of the winter and know that they are alone and that no one can see them. I know people who want simple things like going to work or stopping at the store to always hold the possibility of a life-threatening adventure. I have met people here who want to be isolated and know that for the weekend, if they wish, they can still drive to a place where no people are around for miles and miles and experience what it truly is to be alone with nature. I know a great number of people who have moved here from places like Texas because they were tired of cities and crowding and the change that comes with a steady influx of new people. I have met people who don't know what it is to have a next door neighbor that they can see from in their house and don't want to know what that is like. I know many people here who gladly choose to embrace land, trees, and outdoor space over modern conveniences such as plumbing and in some cases, even electricity. I know a great many Alaskans who want to live as much of their lives by their own two hands as possible. They want to kill their own food, build their own houses, make their own clothes, grow their own gardens, and they want to stand and face the harshness of winter repeatedly to prove that they can do it by themselves because they are both strong and independent. And both unbridled capitalism and liberal socialism require a level of assimilation that would take away too much individuality from the Alaskan spirit, but they will tolerate just enough of these to allow them to live here.

I find it ironic that in discovering that Alaska was not my place, I realized that I was more connected with the Earth than I ever wanted to believe. I struggle with severe Seasonal Affective Disorder and winter depression. I have learned that it is impossible to ignore the weather and carry on a daily life and that the seasons and the rising and the setting of the sun are important. I have learned what it is to miss things like fresh air, the warmth of the sun hitting your skin, and gentle breezes. I have learned not to take things like the smell of freshly cut grass or the chirping of birds for granted. I have learned to appreciate fresh fruits and vegetables. And I realize that even though in the darkness of depression, I sometimes wish to be alone, that I really do not want to be in a place where no one could hear me or see me because I cannot think of a more cruel fate than to be cut off from the rest of the world and forced to truly be "alone." Alaska taught me what it is to be human and for that I will forever be grateful. Many people move to Alaska to experience the great outdoors. I moved here because I thought the outdoors were irrelevant. But I promise that when I leave, I will respect the land. I will grow a garden and I will walk as many places as I can and I will pay attention to the trees, the flowers, and the other plants I took for granted. For I know now what it is to be a child of this Earth and to need the community and fellowship of other human beings. And I have learned that while I have been imbued with the western notion of progress to such an extent that I do not believe I cannot be happy without it, I can at least recognize my assumptions and cultural limitations and respect those who yearn to embrace something different.